My Beauty Best Teacher

On the lighter side of things, apparently you and I are working hard right now to help re-elect President Barack Obama, donating millions through taxes to his campaign to help transport security vehicles, armored limousines, and communications gear into cities ahead of his various campaign appearances. President Obama has decided to fly around the nation giving speech after speech instead of working hard to rebuild our economy, right-size government, lower the deficit, bring efficiency to operations, root out waste and fraud, and working to strike the compromises and deals needed to reform our bankrupt entitlement programs- and you're gonna pay for it.

Via The Daily Caller, Obama campaign gets more Air Force aircraft:

The U.S. Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Barack Obama’s stepped-up visits to campaign events.

The five medium-capacity C-130s and four heavyweight C-17s will be used to ferry security vehicles, armored limousines and communications gear into cities ahead of Obama’s campaign appearances.

In the months before November, the president is expected to fly into multiple cities per week, and speak at multiple sites per day. On Mar. 8, for example, the president will fly to Richmond, and then drive over to a Rolls-Royce aircraft-parts factory. That evening, he’ll fly down to Houston, Texas.

His wife, Vice President Joe Biden and many of his cabinet secretaries are using the Air Force’s fleet of VIP aircraft to visit more states as the election season speeds up.

The nine cargo aircraft will begin operations in April, said Maj. Michelle Lai, communications officer for the Air Force’s 89th Airlift Wing. “They’ll stand down in November 2012,” she said...

...The cargo aircraft have been used to fly troops, weapons and supplies into U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Iraq and other sites in the Middle East during the decade-long operations in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...The squadrons will supplement the existing fleet of VIP passenger aircraft at Andrews. Those aircraft include two giant Boeing 747s — which are tagged Air Force One while they’re carrying the president — as well as five Boeing 757 wide-body passenger jets, and 11 Gulfstream executive jets.

Those passenger aircraft are already helping shuttling cabinet secretaries to their election-related events, many of which are in critical swing-states...

So, to sum up, rather than protecting our nation, or carrying food to poor starving children, or just sitting and not wasting expensive jet fuel, the President has ordered that military assets be used to supplement his already extensive fleet in ferrying people and supplies around the nation, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands.

It's kind of hard for liberals and progressives to argue that President Obama's actions as demonstrated here are anything other than wrong. On the other hand, I kind of feel like this borders on criminal- it's the utter misuse of government resources to support a person's political ambitions and fly friends and family around the nation in taxpayer paid luxury.

Here is what Richard A. Epstein, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Professor of Law at New York University Law School, and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, had to say regarding the major speech that President Barack Obama (one-term Democrat) gave at Osawatomie, Kansas:

The painful ignorance that is revealed in these remarks augurs ill for the long-term recovery of America. With the president firmly determined to set himself against the tides of progress, innovation will be harder to come by. The levels of unemployment will continue to be high as the president works overtime to impose additional restrictions on the labor markets and more taxes at the top of the income distribution—both backhanded ways to reward innovation and growth.

The problem, therefore, with the president’s speech is not that it is demagogic in tone. The problem is that it is intellectually incoherent. As a matter of high principle, the president announces his fealty to markets. As a matter of practical politics, he denigrates and undermines them at every step. It is a frightening prospect to have a president who lives in a time warp that lets him believe that the failed policies of 1935 can lead this nation back from the brink. His chosen constituency, the middle class, should tremble at the prospect that his agenda might well set the course for the United States for the next four years.

In Professor Epstein's analysis of President Obama's speech, he echo's some of the comments that I have been making on liberal blogs like Balloon Juice and others- that in spite of his rhetoric and because of his economic incoherence and illiteracy, workers, school teachers, union employees, blue collar employees, the middle class, supporters of Occupy Wall Street, and related groups are going to suffer the most from President Obama's policies.

As Epstein wrote in his article Populist-in-Chief:

It is a good thing when plants can achieve the same output with less labor. Do we really want an America in which thousands of people work in dangerous occupations to turn molten lava into steel bars? Far better it is that fewer workers are doing those jobs. The jobs lost in that industry will be in part replaced by newer jobs created in the firms that build the equipment that make it possible to run steel mills at a lower cost and far lower risk of personal injury. The former workers can seek jobs in newer industries that will only expand by competing for labor.

And what about those ATM machines? Does the president really want people to have to queue up in banks to make deposits or withdraw cash in order to make a boom market for human tellers? Perhaps we should return to the days before automation, when phone calls were all connected by human operators. And why blast the Internet, which has created far more useful jobs than it has ever destroyed?

You see, if President Obama had his way, we would return to the Great Depression, when people were dependent on government for goods and services because government was in the business of destroying productive business around the world. If President Obama had his way, he would increase taxes and regulations on businesses while giving out subsidies and tax breaks to favored businesses, favoring those who hire lobbyists and special interest groups who redirect wealth over those who create wealth and make products or sell goods and services. If President Barack Obama had his way- a Congress of Democrats that went along with his ideas and ideals- America would be dragged back to the early 1900's, when we had a low standards of living and shorter life spans, and Obama would happily fill up dangerous and inefficient steal mills with 'workers', he would sign praises to the joy of labor while factory workers worked for low wages (compared to today) in dangerous industries, and the working class would have few goods (like cheap cars coming in from the Far East, cheap electronics built in backward nations around the world, and labor-saving devices everywhere built everywhere) just so that he could burnish his protectionist credentials.

When government gets in the business of redirecting wealth and picking and choosing the winners and losers in society, the only people who win and get wealthy are government officials- this lesson has been demonstrated over and over around the world many times over. And yet, that is exactly what Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are proposing to do- increase the power of the government to control wealth, liberty, and property in our society, and that somehow through this 'workers' and the '99%' will get more wealthy and happier. The logic is not explained, the mechanisms by which wealth is created are not explained- rather, the logic is the same logic that is found in every despotic tyranny throughout history- people have earned things that others want, and the government will get those things by playing one side off the other. Obama's magic act of wealth creation is the same sort of tyranny that the world has seen many times over- and has fallen for many times over as well.

Our nation has not only learned nothing from the Great Depression, we have learned the wrong lessons as well (see my post Lessons from Economic Recessions- Introduction and Great Depression), and are going about repeating the same mistakes that turned a recession in 1930 into a Great Depression that lasted to the 1950's (and included in it the collapse of the world into a deadly World War!). We must not allow this guy to enact those same policies- I don't care who does what with the GOP, and it doesn't matter who they are, anyone is an upgrade over this incoherent ideologue whose mind is so filled with mush and mindless platitudes and liberal bumper slogans that he is now unable to effectively design any policies that have a slightly positive effect on anyone.

President Obama, any Democrat who supports him, and any Republican who agrees with his policies needs to join Herbert Hoover on the unemployment line (or better yet, get a job somewhere in the private economy building or making or doing something useful!).

Vladimir Putin is going to take back power in Russia, the Middle East continues to collapse, Europe is facing maybe perhaps its worst financial crisis in decades, China continues to build up its armed forces... and President Obama and his administration is putting the pressure on Ford Motor Company to stop running a commercial which is critical of GM and Chrysler for taking taxpayer money and breaking long-established bankruptcy laws in order to stay in business.

Via the Detroit News:

For the only Detroit automaker that "didn't take the money" of the federal auto bailouts, Ford Motor Co. keeps paying a price for its comparative success and self-reliant turnaround.

There's no help from American taxpayers to help lighten its debt load, giving crosstown rivals comparatively better credit ratings and a financial edge Ford is working diligently to erase all on its own. There's no clause barring a strike by hourly workers amid this fall's national contract talks with the United Auto Workers — a by-product of the taxpayer-financed bailout that General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC retain until 2015. And there's no assurance the Dearborn automaker can use the commercially advantageous fact that it didn't "take the money" proffered by the Obama Treasury Department and use it in TV ads angling to sell cars and trucks. Not if the campaign takes a whack at its Detroit rivals and suggests that Ford no longer supports the Obama administration bailouts it backed in public statements and sworn congressional testimony.

As part of a campaign featuring "real people" explaining their decision to buy the Blue Oval, a guy named "Chris" says he "wasn't going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government," according the text of the ad, launched in early September.

"I was going to buy from a manufacturer that's standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That's what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta' pick yourself up and go back to work."

That's what some of America is about, evidently. Because Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy CEO Alan Mulally repeatedly supported in the dark days of late 2008, in early '09 and again when the ad flap arose. And more.

With President Barack Obama tuning his re-election campaign amid dismal economic conditions and simmering antipathy toward his stimulus spending and associated bailouts, the Ford ad carried the makings of a political liability when Team Obama can least afford yet another one. Can't have that.

The ad (was) pulled in response to White House questions...

That's right- the White House is busy occupying its time with silencing anyone domestically who speaks out against its policies, even if they are private businesses and they have valid criticisms. The Democratic Party is putting this administration forward as their best choice to continue running our nation- that fact right there should tell you everything you need to know about which party to vote against in the coming 2012 election.

Modern day Democrats talk often about 'progress'. If you listen to your Democratic Congressman or Senator or President talk, they'll mention how they want to move society forward, advance the ball, create or grow jobs through government spending, or in some way improve humanity by using the power of the state to hammer the backward among us into the future. Liberal blogs support Democrats by arguing and mocking conservatives and Republicans as 'backwards' and falling behind an advancing liberal society.

But the truth of the matter is that the modern day Democratic Party has betrayed the ideal of 'progress' by promoting policies of the past, policies that lock in jobs and classes and innovations and ideas of the past and act as a barrier to human progress.

President Obama demonstrated this lately when he lamented that the worsening economy isn’t his fault because of things like ATM machines and airport kiosks. He said:

There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.

The modern day Democratic Party does not support or favor any sort of structural changes in America- they don't want America to progress in any sort of way, and this statement says just that- Obama is upset that the vision that he has of the past when he was growing up, a vision of no ATM's and bank tellers patiently waiting in the bank and long lines at the airport waiting for agents to help customers, is no longer the reality of the present and will not be the reality of the future.

Rather than embracing this change, Obama and the modern day Democrats fight against it. They think that they see these changes leading to lost jobs (even though the evidence is that there are more bank tellers than there were in the past), but what they fail to see how this progress has made the People better. By by replacing expensive bank tellers and customer service agents with cheaper automated efficient ATMS and kiosks, banks can now charge lower fees and even have free checking, and airports can lower prices for airline tickets and continue to provide quality service. The People benefit, notably the poor, by these advances in technology and innovation. It is real change, the kind that we all hoped for when Obama was elected, the kind of change and progress that defined a nation that grew from rural settlements clinging to the east coast to a superpower.

But the modern day Democratic Party doesn't like this change- they want to lock in the classes, structures, jobs, technology, and modes of travel that they know and understand and think that they can control.

In my post Nuclear Power and Manned Space Flight: Victims of Democrat's Progress Backwards? I started to advance this meme when I wrote:

America instead is collapsing on the weight of promises made to generations past, ruled over by elitist politicians who seek only to control us, and everyday our nation moves farther away from living a prosperous life in the stars in freedom and liberty, however preposterous or unlikely that future may have been.

The current leadership of our nation speaks of 'progress,' but they are abandoning nuclear power and manned spaceflight in favor of providing healthcare insurance to people who are encouraged not to purchase it and spending money they don't have to support railroads and electric motor carriages and windmills. The future that Obama, Democrats, liberals, and Republicans that go along with them is not a future full of cheap safe energy and man roaming freely in the stars- it is a future with man going backward, remembering that once, long ago, before I was born and before my students were born, man built generators that were powered by the atom splitting and man walked on the moon.

Man once walked on the moon! Nuclear power plants were once built! Say it- and then realize that these are events of the past- that the new normal and likely new future of America and the world is a long, slow slide backwards into tyranny, injustice, and confiscation of property by elites.

The modern day Democratic Party, including my Congressman Gary Peters and my Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin and my President Barack Obama, push through legislation, appointments, and executive orders energy policies that attempt to lock in the 1970's. Excessive regulations and cancelling of the Yucca Mountain project ensure that our nation will have the same number of nuclear power plants as the 1970's. Through regulations and taxes and fees they have prevented or delayed or made more expensive the building new refineries, drilling for oil, or developing new natural resources.

Modern day Democrats talk about putting in place policies that push us to walk or travel by bus or train- methods of transportation that have long since been surpassed by automobiles and airplanes, although because automobiles travel on government-built roads and because air travel is increasingly regulated by the government, both of these modes of transportation are less dynamic and innovative and efficient than they could be if Americans were as free as they could be.

None of this should be a surprise to voters, and yet it seems to be. When Obama gave a major speech on energy when he was running for President in 2008, I wrote:

As I listened to Obama talk about his energy visions for the future, I imagined what it would be like to live in a world that is cured of it's oil addiction- a world where there is no power generated by fossil fuels, and instead water and wind power the world. Ahh, indeed- the change we need... windmill from ancient Rhodes, waterwheel from Roman Spain...

Democrats are about locking in the class system that we currently had and are all about fighting any change to it. That's why they bail out banks and automotive companies- it has little to do with saving jobs and everything to do with saving jobs from people who they are friends with and who donate money to them. Democrats are all about taxing the rich, because they know that the super rich will be able to hide their money in offshore accounts or deduct it through hidden tax code provisions, but yet the upper middle class won't be able to dodge these taxes and will be forced to pay them and will sink into the lower classes which are so dependent on government help. Democrats are all about regulations and licensing and provisions and rules, all of which by their costs and difficulty in implementing help existing firms and companies, especially those large ones that are able to lobby government for waivers, but yet hurt new firms and businesses, especially small ones, who are not able to get past the barriers that the government erects to challenge the existing businesses and by so doing change our nation for the better.

While Obama might talk about how ATMs and kiosks are costing jobs, what he really is lamenting is that his vision of the past is being destroyed by advances that he didn't see coming and doesn't fully understand how to control- he is upset that his vision of the past is no longer the present now that we have had real progress in spite of Democrats efforts.

Humanity is amazing, and can remake the world in amazing ways when unleashed and freed from the bonds of government and the state through limited government, rule of law, protection of property, low taxes, low regulation, and conservative principles.

But modern day Democrats have betrayed the ideas of 'progress' and instead are now only interested in putting place policies that lock in the past.

Walter Russell Mead makes an interesting argument in a recent article- in spite of Obama running as the anti-Bush and in spite of his supporters voting for him because he was supposed to be the anti-Bush, his recent actions show that he is in fact working his hardest now to push for Bush's policies in international affairs:

....President Obama’s speech to State Department employees today was billed as a major address on recasting American foreign policy in the Middle East.

It lived up to its billing. President Obama has deep-sixed the ‘realism’ that marked the first two years of his approach to the Middle East. He has returned to the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

The United States is no longer, the President told us in words he could have borrowed from his predecessor, a status quo power in the Middle East. The realist course of cooperating with oppressive regimes in a quest for international calm is a dead end. It breeds toxic resentment against the United States; it stores up fuel for an inevitable conflagration when the oppressors weaken; it stokes anti-Israel resentment when hatred of Israel becomes the only form of political activism open to ordinary people; it strengthens the hold of extremist religion and strangles the growth of liberal forces.

More, he attacked Iran. All that talk about avoiding polarization with Iran is gone. Instead, President Obama singled out Iran as an oppressive, tyrannical regime supporting terror and running an “illicit nuclear program” as well.

He also followed Bush in attacking some US allies, calling on Bahrain and Yemen to make changes. It was a speech that enraged almost every powerful actor in the Middle East and put America out on a limb. Like Bush, Obama is willing to confront some of America’s closest allies (the Saudis, who back the crackdown in Bahrain). Like Bush, he hailed Iraq as an example of democracy and pluralism that can play a vital role in the transformation of the region. Like Bush, he proposes to work with opposition groups in friendly countries.

His policy on Israel-Palestine is also looking Bushesque. Like Bush, he wants a sovereign but demilitarized Palestinian state. Like Bush, he believes that the 1967 lines with minor and mutually agreed changes should be the basis for the permanent boundaries between the two countries — and like Bush he set Jerusalem and the refugees to one side....

Obama is showing quite a bit of courage in abandoning all of his previous principles, opinions, views, and voting records to continue the previous policies of an administration that he personally attacked many times, and his supporters are very brave in supporting Obama's remarkable change in policies from George W Bush to George W Bush. But in spite of all of this change and togetherness and hope and rainbows, I can't help but feel that if Bush's policies are so good and wise now, what sort of damage did Obama do in fighting them in the Senate during the blink-of-eye that he was actually in government prior to becoming President, and what sort of damage did Obama do to our nation in resisting these policies during the first two years that he was getting his ears dried off while playing at being President?

I guess I'm just nit-picking though- I should be happy that Obama finally is learning that all of his instincts and ideas regarding foreign policy are wrong and that George W Bush was right about a great many things. Obama's greatest foreign policy successes have come by following on Bush's heels- from killing OBL to the surge in Afghanistan- and maybe one of these days he'll begin to follow in Bush's domestic policy heels too and we'll go back to the awful days of 5% unemployment growth and positive GDP growth.

UPDATE: To be serious for a moment, I still can't figure out why the Jewish community voted for Barack Obama so strongly last election. I've always thought that something about how he deals with Jewish people bothers me- he appears at times to be against Jewish people, demanding more evidence from them and less from others, not believing them and believing others, and being cold and vaguely disrespectful towards Israel's leaders while warm and inviting towards the leaders of Israel's enemies. The National Review Online actually did some analysis of his speech, and picked up on a couple of these tendencies of Obama- his tendency to blame the Jews, his tendency to order the Jews to do things, and his tendency to minimize threats to the Jewish people. These are all vaguely disturbing tendencies for the President of the United States to have.

Gasoline prices are climbing higher and higher, and it's not even summer yet, when gasoline prices traditionally go real high. These high prices cut into discretionary spending in families, and also put increasing inflationary pressure businesses who need to pay more for fuel costs and transportation, and they then pass these higher costs on to consumers as higher prices, further cutting into discretionary spending. High gasoline prices are a threat to our prosperity and will increasingly work to lower economic growth, cause unemployment, and lower real incomes of the lower and middle class who are most affected by rises in gasoline prices.

There are likely many reasons for the rise in gasoline prices, but at the heart of the matter is that there is increasingly demand for the product and yet the supply of the product is not increasing. There is no documented evidence of evil rich millionaires hoarding billions of gallons of gasoline in black-painted tankers that float in the middle of Hades, and there is considerable evidence that the Middle East is growing more unstable, partly due to Obama's policies of throwing allies under the bus and yet supporting enemies to stability and international commerce.

Last week the House of Representatives and the Senate both debated and passed legislation to do something about the rising price of gasoline in our nation. Let's look at what each chamber did:

In the House of Representatives, Republicans shoved through a bill that would force the Interior Department (controlled by Democratic President Barack Obama) to act within 60 days on all applications for offshore drilling permits. You see, under Obama, offshore drilling permits are not being acted on, naturally leading to less discoveries of supplies of oil and natural speculation that oil prices will go higher because of this. Democrats worked to oppose this measure, believing that exploring for and discovering and selling more oil will not provide income, jobs, or cheaper gasoline for the poor citizens of our nation.

For those interested, in Michigan, Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (GOP) voted in favor of lowering gasoline prices and provide jobs and income for our citizens, and Congressman Gary Peters voted against the bill, since he owes green industries a lot for their campaign support over the last several years.

The House then turned to a second Republican-sponsored bill that would open much of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic shorelines to new oil and gas exploration- again, working to for real expand the supply of oil, which would lead to a real decrease in the cost of gas. Democrats are expected to oppose this measure as well.

In contrast, the Democrats in the Senate are working to demonize oil companies that are doing well because they are doing well, believing that success in producing a product demands punishment. Specifically, they want to cut off taxpayer subsidies to any firm they don't like, and continue to use the money that they suck off of profitable firms to subsidize unprofitable and inefficient 'green' companies, who kick back massive amounts of campaign funding to Democrats as a thank you for this obvious corruption.

These higher taxes will either be passed on to consumers as higher gasoline prices, or if is not passed on to consumers it will work to reduce the profitability of these firms so that they have less money to invest in improving efficiency and greening their operations, less money to look for new supplies of oil and gas, and less money to pay their employees. Investors will be paid lower dividends, leading to those people on fixed incomes from investments to suffer, and these important stocks will be sold off, leading to a fall in the stock market.

No good will come of the actions of the Democrats in the Senate; instead, many bad things will occur. Supporting this sort of legislation is Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, who believes that demonizing and attacking private profitable companies and increasing taxes on them will somehow lower the cost of the product that they produce.

It could not be clearer- the policies of the Democrats in the Senate are making our nation less, and the policies of the Republicans in the House are making our nation more, and more is almost better than less.

Every single year there is an event called The White House Correspondents' Dinner. The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is an organization of journalists who cover the White House and the President of the United States, and every year they host a dinner reception, which in recent decades has become more of a roast of the President, where comedians and the President himself take turns making fun of the President and his policies. It's all in good fun and the humor is light and playful- or at least it used to be.

President Obama has brought change to the The White House Correspondents' Diner- it is no longer light and in good fun and the target of jokes is no longer the President himself, now under Obama, the dinner is all about making fun of everyone that the President doesn't like, taking personal shots at his rivals, and using the power of the office of President to make bitter and mean attacks on other people.

A google news search of "White House Correspondents' Dinner" from 2001-2008, which was the time period that Republican George W. Bush was President, reveals the picture. Way back then when politics was less bitter and partisan and vindictive, the stories that the dinner generated included:

• In 2006, laughter and discussion regarding Stephen Colbert's mock tribute to President Bush at the dinner, where Colbert mocked Bush and his policies and the whole room laughed in good humor.
• In 2007, Bush said it was important for people in Washington "to learn to laugh" and that the ability for a nation to poke fun at its leaders is good for democracy.
• In 2005, Laura Bush ripped off a series of pretty funny jokes on the President, mocking her husbands TV habits, laziness, and mother-in-law.
• In 2004, Bush has a serious message, because he was being criticized by Democrats over a performance a month earlier at the Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner in which he made a humorous slide show of his personal search for WMD's in Iraq.
• In 2002, Bush did an extensive routine that ranged from mocking his ability to pronounce names to his policies in the Middle East.

A quick scan of results from the Clinton years also returns results that show that the dinner has in recent years been an opportunity to make fun and light of the President and his policies. Obama changed this tradition.

Via memeorandum, we see that Obama once more used the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner to rip into his opponents, mock his opponents policies, roll off a series of non-funny and mean jokes, and generally turn the event into a cold exercise in bitter partisanship. There was no 'learning to laugh' at Obama and he continues to demonstrate his inability to learn anything about being a better person, directing his attacks and jokes and mockery outward rather than inward. Our democracy was not improved by demonstrating its ability to make fun of its leaders, since under Obama this democracy is moving more towards tyranny, where you don't make fun of your leaders because there will be retribution.

Obama took his time at the dinner to systematically work his way through all of his political rivals and potential challengers in 2012, mocking each and ripping each as the adoring crowd lapped it up, except for the people who were being ripped and mocked, who sat there in cold silence and anger that the President of the United States was ripping them. I know, comedy is hard, and that making fun of other people is difficult and requires skill and tact and grace, but once again we see that President Obama lacks skill and tact and grace and turned this dinner into an exercise to send people home angry and upset and lessened by his comments.

Unlike past events when the target of the jokes and humor was the President, this dinner was an attempt to turn his main rival Donald Trump (according to recent polling) into a punching bag. I've seen the video- at one point, the joking does go too far, and everyone can see that the line was crossed from gentle making fun of a person to personally attacking them in a mean spirited manner, and it's at that point that the room looked for leadership to our President, but he was busy laughing too, enjoying the slicing and ripping on a rival and sucking in the vileness of the room.

President Obama and those who laugh and joke in such a manner deserve to be thrown out of office. Our nation has no place for such meanness and smallness.

UPDATE: TheBlogProf sums up what the dinner has become under Obama:

I think most people would agree that repeatedly punching someone in the face while your friends hold that person from responding is less than fair and amounts to bullying in the extreme. It is also gutless. Yesterday, it was pretty much the same thing as Obama attacked Donald Trump from the bully pulpit without Trump being able to respond. This was simply classless and has become Obama's MO.

UPDATE II: I agree with Trump- Obama's use of the White House Correspondents' Dinner as yet another forum for him to engage in his bitter partisanship attacks is 'not the greatest' and 'inappropriate.' It is worth noting that Donald Trump appears to have more class than Obama in this situation- but at least when Donald dropped inappropriate F-bombs earlier in the week that was at a partisan event.

UPDATE III: To all of those liberals and Democrats commenting, here are some more jokes that I am sure you will find witty, clever, and all sorts of funny. There are dozens of jokes like this over at Big Hollywood- here are some of the best:

• So, have you heard about those Republicans? Yeah, I hate them and I think they’re stupid.
• The funniest thing about Obama is how SO MANY people don’t get how cool and smart and physically attractive he is.
• Q: Why did the blonde get confused by an ordinary household object? A: Cuz she was a Republican. And Republicans are stupid.
• “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Republicans.” “Republicans who?” “Republicans sure are stupid and evil.”
• So, a Republican walks into a bar, and I get super upset.
• A black man, a Hispanic, and a Jew enter a bar. They all say in turn, “Voting Republican would make us traitors to our races!”
• So, what’s the deal with the Tea Party? Is it racist, or is it SUPER racist?

“John! Yaksan! Katie! Ahkmed! Tayler! Latecia! Steve! Muhammad! Violet! Sonwalbie!” 

And now, my friends, as we fly over Stockholm, and we rush on, I shall dream and know that when I am roused from my slumber, that the best dreams are the ones you see when you’re awake

Liberal talk radio and liberal bloggers are all pretty much using the same talking point over the last couple days- that Republicans are wrong on Libya. They feel that Republicans should have been against US involvement early and supportive of Obama's involvement of the US in Libya late, and see current Republican criticism of Obama as just opportunist hypocritical games. But, as is usual, they are wrong, and there is a good article on National Review counting all the valid and good reasons for conservatives and Republicans to be critical of Obama's recent actions in Libya.

From Let Us Count the Ways...

1) Timing: If the administration believed this monster should have left, it should have acted when the rebels had the momentum, and not issued threats and demands for Qaddafi to go without commensurate efforts to follow such saber-rattling up. Fairly or not, the administration established a goal that it now seems to be backing away from, as it talks of toning down the operation before it is even a week old. We boasted about storming Vienna, pulled up at its outskirts, froze, and are now bewildered that someone inside actually is fighting back.

2) Approval: To start a third war in the Middle East, the president should have first gone to Congress, especially since he and Vice President Biden have compiled an entire corpus of past speeches, some quite incendiary, equating presidential military intervention without congressional approval with illegality to the point of an impeachable offense (cf. Biden’s warning to Bush over a possible Iran strike). And why boast of U.N. and Arab League approval but not seek the sanction of the U.S. Congress?

3) Consistency: Why is meddling okay in Libya but was not okay in Iran when dissidents there were likewise making headway? Is there any rationale that determines our response to unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, or Libya? It seems we are making it up ad hoc, always in reaction to the perceived pulse of popular demonstrations — always a hit-and-miss, day-late-dollar-short proposition.

4) Aims and Objectives: Fact: We are now and then bombing Libyan ground targets in order to enhance the chances of rebel success in removing or killing Qaddafi. Fiction: We are not offering ground support but only establishing a no-fly zone, and have no desire to force by military means Qaddafi to leave. Questions: Is our aim, then, a reformed Qaddafi? A permanently revolutionary landscape? A partitioned, bisected nation? What is the model? Afghanistan? Mogadishu? The 12-year no-fly-zone in Iraq? A Mubarak-like forced exile? Who are the rebels? Westernized reformers? Muslim Brotherhood types? A mix? Who knows? Who cares?

5) Hypocrisy: This Libyan war is transpiring in a political climate where, for the last ten years, Obama and his supporters have lectured us that it is not only amoral and unwise but illegal for America to attack an oil-producing Muslim country that does not threaten our national security, a sin magnified if committed without congressional approval. It also follows similar demagoguery on Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventative detentions, etc. — measures blasted as near-criminality under Bush but embraced or expanded under Obama. In this regard, the prior rhetoric of an Eric Holder or a Harold Koh bears no resemblance to their present action — a hypocrisy that follows from the president himself.

6) Means and Ends: The monthly federal budget deficit now exceeds the yearly deficit prior to when Bush went into Iraq — at a time when we are engaged in two other Middle East theaters, gas is soaring, inflation is back, and we have borrowed $5 trillion since this administration took office.

7) Leadership: This is a Potemkin coalition, far smaller than the one that fought in either Afghanistan or Iraq, notwithstanding loud proclamations to the contrary. We are not even done with the first week of bombing, and yet no one seems in charge: What body/country/alliance determines targets, issues communiques, or coordinates diplomacy? The U.K. goes after Qaddafi, and we plead “They did it, not us”? Again, fairly or not, the impression is that Obama dressed up preponderant American intervention under a multicultural fig leaf, earning the downsides of both. A loud multilateral effort could be wise diplomacy, but not if it translates into a desire to subordinate American options and profile to European and international players that are not commensurately shouldering the burden — and not if all this is cynically used to advance a welcomed new unexceptional American profile.

When we talk of “European leadership,” we mean the U.K. and France, not Germany, Italy, or most of the EU. When we talk of the “Arab League,” we mean essentially zero military assets. And when we talk of the “U.N.,” we mean zero blue-helmeted troops. So, like it or not, there is a level of understandable cynicism that suspects Obama’s new paradigm of multilateral, international action is simply the same-old, same-old, albeit without the advantages that accrue when America is unapologetic about its leadership role, weathers the criticism, and insists on the options and prerogatives that a superpower must demand in war by virtue of its power and sacrifice.

These are all valid criticisms of Obama's involvement on the US in Libya, and he should be made to answer for them in 2012.

There was something buried way down in the news, under Libya going up in flames, the Middle East collapsing, oil exploding in price, budget battles in DC, a looming Democratic-government shutdown, rioting and protesting in Wisconsin, pirates shooting American citizens off Somalia, and the economic forecasts being seriously downgraded. You probably missed it, and that's probably exactly what Democratic President Obama wanted you do to, because if you found out that he had just abandoned another important campaign promise and decided to let special interest groups legalize gay marriage at the federal level, you and many other moderate voters might be a little upset.

Via The Fix, I read Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that the Justice Department would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act. The DOMA, for those of you who don't know, is an act of legislation that was passed in 1996 by the Republican Congress with considerable support from the Democrats and then signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton. It is an important act which candidate Obama said he would defend, but now President Obama is no longer going to. Although he himself is married to one woman and his wife would likely get pretty mad if he re-defined marriage to allow him to marry other men and women or animals or whatever, he is abandoning his stated principles and has decided to no longer fight in court for his views and beliefs.

In a practical sense, it means that lawsuits will soon go forward, unchecked by the executive of our nation who is supposed to execute and defend the laws of our nation, that will work to challenge the constitutionality of DOMA in courts that are favorable to liberal views.

In my humble opinion, Section 2 of the Act is clearly constitutional- it excludes same-sex marriages from the Full Faith and Credit Clause in language that quotes from the Constitution itself, which is important because otherwise one liberal state could have a single judge make it legal and thereby make it legal over our entire nation, while Section 3 is also constitutional, in that it defines the word marriage to mean a legal union between one man and one woman, which is the accepted definition of marriage since the beginning of time. In my opinion, there isn't a whole lot that lawsuits could attack, unless they feel that the language in the Constitution itself is 'unconstitutional' (only a matter of time until liberal judges start arguing that) or that the word marriage doesn't mean the union of one man and one woman and perhaps means anything at all (one rock and one man, three women and one man, one man and one man, three man and three dogs, a million men and a million women, etc).

Obama's stance on this issue is one more indication that when you put someone in the White House who believes in everything, you put someone in the White House who believes in nothing. He is an empty suit of a man, weak and unsure of his own beliefs and unwilling to defend or fight for that which he believes is right. America deserved to be punished for the mistake of electing him, it's just too bad that my kids and grandkids are also being punished too for voters stupidity in electing him President.

Although Obama might not view what is happening in the Middle East as all that important- he is going to basketball games and concerts and instead directing attempts to riot in WI- I think it is very important because the Middle East region sits on a very important resource- oil. So for fun, I put together a graph this morning to demonstrate the amount of oil production that is affected by the crisis in the Middle East. The graph shows oil production by country based on the most recent data I found in the CIA World Factbook, and shows each nation currently in crisis or about to be in crisis, and then the gray area represents all other nations not currently affected.

Any change in oil production likely will cause the price of gasoline to go up, and as you can see, a large percentage of the world's oil comes out of this affected region, although if Saudi Arabia stays stable, then the percentages is considerably less although still significant. In my amateur opinion, gas prices are going to rise, the economy will dip again, and Obama will react to this all by supporting our enemies and lowering our oil output. Here is the graph:

As Admiral Ackbar once famously said "It's a trap!"

2012 isn't that far away, and it is becoming one of the most important elections in American history. In one direction America will continue to travel down the road to the gray mass of the rest of the world, losing its exceptionalism and becoming a Europe of favored ruling classes and slaves working for them. In the other direction, regardless of the nominee the Republicans choose, will be tough choices and grown-up decisions that are sure to anger and upset a lot of people but years from now grandchildren of an exceptional America of freedom and liberty will look back on and thank. Until recently, I could not imagine any way that Obama could be re-elected to the Presidency, but via memeorandum, I read this on Powerlineblog:

Obama's game is transparent, isn't it? He is playing a game of chicken. He puts forward a series of proposals that he knows are more or less insane; but he also believes that Republicans will come to his rescue. They, not being wholly irresponsible, will come up with plans to reform entitlements--like, for example, the Ryan Roadmap. Ultimately, some combination of those plans will be implemented because the alternative is the collapse, not just of the government of the United States, but of the country itself. But Obama thinks the GOP's reforms will be unpopular, and he will be able to demagogue them, thus having his cake and eating it too. Is that leadership? Of course not. But it is the very essence of Barack Obama.

This game is getting more transparent each day- the Republicans cut a measly $100 million from the budget for the coming year and Democrats are making noise about some sort of government shut down, Obama sends his minions and allies to Wisconsin to trash the capital and wave disgusting signs, all while the Middle East collapses and Obama is left steps behind admiring pictures of him shaking hands with these former dictators whose regimes are collapsing. Obama has got a game though- more elaboration on his game over at Chicago Boyz (please read the full thing- this is only part of the analysis):

Obama knows exactly what he is doing. Obama is setting up a confrontation and he plans to win.

Obama is betting that he can force the GOP to make their proposed cuts, which he can blame them for, which he can truthfully say he does not support. Then he can attack the Republicans for making the cuts. He will appeal to the people who are suffering from the cuts, and strip away GOP support. They will be angry and mobilized. Obama then plans to force the GOP into a funding crisis just as Clinton did. Obama plans to destroy the GOP reform wave of 2011 just as Clinton destroyed the GOP reform effort in 1995.

Obama’s team attempted to use the Tucson massacre in the same fashion that Clinton used the Oklahoma City bombings, to discredit the GOP. Obama is acutely aware of the Clinton playbook. This is another re-run.

If Obama wins, then the GOP / Tea Party effort is over and the Democrats have won the whole ball game. Obama gets reelected, the GOP is finished as a political party, and we have a mess for some number of years while a new party forms. But odds are it will be too late by then. A majority of people will be dependent on the Government.

It is that serious.

This is the game, people. It is a serious game with serious consequences. Recent polling in Wisconsin shows that 48% of the people of that state support liberty and freedom and private property rights and 38% support the rights of the privileged few to demand more benefits from taxpayers. Although the good guys are winning in that poll, it is not a majority- the day is fast approaching when democracy will rule and those who have political power will outnumber those who do not and will use the power of the state to steal from others and bring tyranny and injustice to America, as it is in every other nation in the world. This is a serious game- you all better be up for it. Obama is, and he won 2 years ago, and now our nation is trillions more in debt and weaker internationally, politically, and culturally because of it. Can we afford another 4 more years? I doubt it.